the pressure

You've read those stories. Those people who had near-death experiences and how they became changed people: gave up smoking, went overseas to volunteer, building houses for the poor, holding sick children. They finally find a job and get sober, go to church, become a shining member of the community.

When you've expereienced a life-altering experience, usually you come out stronger, and become a much more positive contribution to your family, society, the world, the Universe.

For me, Ferdinand's death was a near-death experience as well. (Actually, I died.) It is without a doubt life-altering. But I did not emerge a better person with a lot to give to this world. I will say though I feel more awake in some sense.

I will admit that I almost felt the pressure to become better. To start serving food at the soup kitchen, run marathons to raise funds for various causes, perhaps donate a kidney, half a lung, maybe an eyeball even.

Do you think this? -- Something's good gotta come out of this.

Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. It depends on the day I am having. Some days it makes me more compassionate and I can actually reach out and be genuinely nice to (grouchy) strangers. Some days I spit on the dirt, slam my door and slither under a rock, wrapping my rattling tail around my neck.

I have not done anything major after my son died. Sure, I made a few donations and I made great efforts in being an even more present mother. I worked harder at being compassionate, calm and patient. Other than that, I have just been trying to live, trying to figure out how to live the life of a bereaved without making a laughing-stock of myself. (And all the while fending off insensitive remarks and some clueless people who makes the already-bad life-after even worse.)

Now, two years out less a day (tomorrow is Ferdinand's birth/death day. I don't know what is a good word to call it. Anniversary? Birth and death day? Usually we call it birthday in our house...), I feel I am slowly coming out from the shadow.

I am not ready to do big things yet. (Though sometimes I wish I do. I wish I am announcing here a new foundation I am setting up, a baby-related research that I am throwing money into, a charity that I will be sponsoring for life, the name of the soup kitchen where you are going to be seeing me... but NO. Not today.) Just small tiny steps. Like trying to walk again with new feet.

Just trying to live better. For myself, my children, my family. Doing things I can for the community, when I can. Living more eco-consciously. Listening better to strangers. Not curse so much when driving on the highway, sending compassion the way of errant drivers (of course I am a perfect driver. Don't you ever doubt that).

A part of that entails stepping away from the internet and spending more time and attention on making our house more like a home, not the war-zone it has been the past two years. More time with the children I have earthside, creating memories that will buoy them and strengthen and empower them and make them better citizens of the world (hopefully). More time thinking about what am I here to do, what potential is within me that needs nurturing, perhaps?

So, this is a farewell post on this wonderful website. I am sad to go (and honestly, even afraid... but I will still have my blog), but I also think it's time for new blood. I feel I have said a lot and it is time to listen instead. I also just wanted to explore this issue of the pressure to be "better" and to do grand things after our babies died, wondering if I am the only moron who thinks that way. Will you share your thoughts?

warrior mama

When I was pregnant with Dahlia, I was absolutely, undeniably, nothing’s gonna get in my way going to birth my child at home, and naturally. I was even, I admit, judgmental about anyone’s choice to do otherwise – I just couldn’t understand why anyone would actually want to have their baby, on drugs, in a hospital. Without being aware of it, I took for granted that a healthy baby would be the guaranteed reward of my empowered choices – an exceptionally healthy baby who would thrive even more than expected because s/he would come out of me naturally and go directly to my breast, uninterrupted, in the comfort of our home.

Dahlia had other plans. After 32 hours of hard back labor at home and several of those hours stalled at eight centimeters, I made a very clear choice to go to the hospital for an epidural. Six hours later, she was born easily and safely and immediately put on my chest. Four hours after that, having signed a dozen liability waivers to be allowed to leave the hospital early, we were back home in our bed with our new daughter.

I had my healthy child, in spite of her hospital birth. Even then I took for granted the incredible miracle of her health and her life. I spent a good part of the next year working through my guilt around having chosen to go to the hospital and have an epidural. A part of me felt inferior for the choice, and I felt, in some way, that I had failed.

I did it with Tikva too. Even with this child whose life – of any length – I knew would be a miracle, I fretted for a while during her short life about having chosen the epidural. The epidural I told Dave I wanted because I didn’t feel relaxed, and I wanted – needed – to feel relaxed as I delivered my child whom I knew would be unable to breathe on her own, who might not even make it past her birth. Maybe it was my brain’s need to fret over something that really didn’t matter in order to distract myself just a little bit from what was so constantly at the forefront of my consciousness: That my daughter’s life was fragile and unsure, her future – and mine – unknown. That she very well might die, and that I would be forever changed no matter how the story unfolded.

My thoughts have rambled before around the question of how to birth a child and what my choices mean. But it’s not this that is on my mind right now. Though related, it’s something different.

I have read my share of birth announcement emails and birth stories since Tikva came through my life. All are different. All but one have announced the birth of a healthy living baby (or babies). Some were born in the hospital, some at home, some vaginally and others by scheduled C-section for various reasons. Regardless of location, those that told the stories of vaginal deliveries have shared one quality:

Praise of the superior mother who births her child naturally, vaginally, and without drugs.

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is a progressive place, a liberal place, a funky place, full of New Age and yoga studios and locally grown organic produce and raw food vegan restaurants and Michael Franti concerts in small venues. I love it here, it has been my home for 30 years. And I recognize that I am immersed in just a tiny sliver of the way most people in the U.S. – let alone the world – approach life. Before he met me, my husband didn’t even know babies could be born at home in the western world.

Yet there is a certain holier-than-though message being communicated here without being spoken outright, and I don’t think it is just here in California. As the day of Tikva’s birth approaches a year later, I have become extremely sensitive to it. The message tells me:

You are a powerful goddess, a mighty warrior when you have birthed your child naturally, trusting your inner wisdom and strength to guide you.

Because you are a warrior, you will be rewarded with the undeniable manifestation of your choices – a healthy child.

So what am I? What am I if I birth my child in another way? Am I less mighty, less empowered for choosing to have an epidural? Am I less of a warrior because I birthed my children in the hospital? Do I trust my inner wisdom less?

And what is Tikva, my child who died, whose body was too fragile to live for very long? Any less a gift? Any less a manifestation of the most incredible grace and magic life has to offer?

And what of Dahlia, my precious light who was born healthy, in the hospital, with an epidural?

See what I’m getting at here?

How about this for warrior:

I birthed two babies, and carried three. I said goodbye to one too soon at just 10 weeks of pregnancy. I carried Tikva for 20 of her 40+ weeks knowing that she might not live. I moved halfway around the world to give her every fighting chance. My relationship with my husband grew deeper and more solid throughout her life and since. Together, we cared for Dahlia while she, too, loved and lost her sister.

I loved my daughter fiercely for every day of her short life. I lived with grace, connected to her and to God in every moment. I loved her so completely, so unconditionally, that I knew when it was time to let her go. I held her as she breathed her final breaths. I felt the moment when her spirit left the beautiful body that I held in my arms for the last time. I stroked her soft cheek. I held my daughter as she died.

Am I less of a warrior because of how and where I birthed her? Am I any less her mother because she is not here in my arms?

So much of our collective identity as women is tied to being a mother. No wonder all of that comes into question – in our own eyes as we look at ourselves now, after loss – when our child dies. I can only imagine how much more so when that child dies before s/he is born, or during or shortly after birth.

But we are no less a warrior, no less empowered, no less mighty and powerful and connected to our inner strength without our children here to prove it. I never knew the depth of the warrior I could be until Tikva entered my life, until she departed. I never knew the grace I could live from was possible before her.

I think we are asked – in the moment of loss – to tap into a warrior in ourselves we might never have known was there. Because to mother a child who has died – to say goodbye over and over, to let go a little bit every day for the rest of our lives – is HARD. It is powerful, mighty, full of grace.

The work of a warrior like no other.

That’s what’s been on my mind lately when I think about birth.

That’s what I remember when I read another birth story, when I doubt for a moment the true warrior that I am.

Yes, I am a warrior too.

And so are you.

.::. .::. .::.

What makes you a warrior? Do you believe that you are? How did you approach birth before losing your child, and now?

thinking back, looking forward

It was a year ago this week that we began what would end up being a weeklong stay on the cardiac and then ICU wards at the children's hospital. In my mind's eye the memory is seen from a point of view over my shoulder, blurry as though through a filtered lens, all mottled edges and underwater sounds.

The brunette receptionist.

Being buzzed in.

The nurse I ignored as she greeted me, thinking she couldn't be old enough to know a thing.

Me holding tight, one hand held protectively against the back of Sadie's head, the other under her tiny padded bum.

My utter disbelief that we were there to begin with.

Why did they know who we were? Why were they expecting us?

Of course, the emergency room doctor at our local hospital had called ahead. She had already sent me home to pack a bag and call my husband before arranging for an ambulance to bring us across the city. She understood long before we left that the size of her heart made Sadie a very sick little girl.

There was a bed waiting for us. I distinctly remember feeling panic rise in my chest over not understanding what anyone was saying. I didn't want to take her out of her sling to hand her over to anyone. The strongest bond she and I formed over her six short weeks on earth was when I held her, cheek nuzzled to my neck. She was soothed instantly by it. It made me understand what it meant to be willing to give your life for another’s. I don’t have to explain to any of you the depth of devotion one feels toward their child. The strongest love that exists, full stop.

The walls were painted a vivid yellow; the enormous privacy curtains around each bed pumpkin orange. They were such happy colours to use as the backdrop to a thousand layers and personal brands of fear, doubt, and confusion. By mid afternoon they cast a warm glow on one’s skin when the sun shone through the wall of windows at the end of the ward. As though the fiery determination of all of those terrified parents was burning from their insides out as they learned to administer meds and monitor heart rates.

Shortly after arriving we met the specialists who would diagnose her Cardiomyopathy and tell us how rare and difficult it typically proved for infants. I was knocked out of my daze into the present, struggling to comprehend his intricate explanation of how a healthy heart works versus how our daughter’s did. I slowly understood that I needed to think of her as a ‘Heart Baby’ and what that meant to our future. I began to write stories in my head to her. All of which included how to explain her special circumstances, in which her special heart needed extra special care, because she was different from other people in a very special way.

One morning, for the first time, she looked right at me as I leaned over her hospital bed and smiled the most beautiful smile in history. Machines beeped and children cried and she sealed her spot as the love of my life.

A week later we would watch a team of intensive care doctors try in vain to save her life.

Neither of us has been the same since, in too many ways to mention. But together we're so much stronger than apart.

.::.

I told my husband months ago that I wanted very much to escape from our lives on March 31st. I didn’t want to have to face anyone else but the one who understands what is happening in my heart. He understands that if anything, a year is but a minute when it comes to grief.

The difference between today and a year ago is not that the pain of our lost girl has diminished. It has only changed. Morphing from a life size mask to become an inky black fragment of my shadow. Always there and forever a part of me, but not the first thing you’ll see when you meet me. Sadie would have wanted me to take the mask off. I am still her mother. I am still me.

Next Tuesday, on the morning that will mark a year since we lost her, I will wake up early beside the man I love and watch the sunrise. We’ll have breakfast on the roof of our riad in the heart of Marrakech. Then we will travel to the Atlas Mountains with the solitary goal of drinking in the natural beauty of the exotic Moroccan landscape. I want to spend our time walking by his side, exploring the medina together. Breathing in the scents of spice and soaking up the turquoise sky. Losing ourselves in the city described as one that time has forgotten. All that matters is that I will be far away with him, remembering her.

.:.

How did you spend the first anniversary of your child's death, or how do you intend to?

Waiting to exhale

My bad season starts all the way at the end of November. It's the feeling of walking towards the edge. Not all the way to it yet, but certainly towards. December 31st is our N years and 11 months day. It's been tough so far, for N=0 and N=1, to reconcile New Year's Eve, a big, huge deal for those who hail from the Old Country, with the inescapable understanding that the event being celebrated takes us smack into the longest, coldest anniversary month. Januaries themselves have so far been difficult. Not every day, but many. Most? And when that's over, there is still, just over the February hump, the due date anniversary.

Two years ago today was the Tuesday after. After the due date, due date that is the day after his sister's birthday. Monkey was born on her due date, which is why, I think, even though A has his own birth day, I am unable to let go of the due date. Two years ago today was also the Tuesday after Monkey's 5th birthday party. For which I'd gone entirely overboard. The present she wanted most of all-- her baby brother to be born right on her birthday,-- wasn't going to happen. So it's only logical that I went into overdrive for this party, yes? And it was a good party, don't get me wrong. Hell, it was a great party. And in the end I was exhausted, overwhelmed by tiredness, but also (DUH!) by grief.

And yet, there was not much room for me to cocoon-- my house was teeming with relatives. They've come to celebrate the birthday and to mark the due date. They've done both, and it was good. But, at times, it was also too much. Too much noise, too much talk, too much space, physical and head both, occupied.

Two years later, and the season had been hard, again. Heh-- not so much had as has. The season is still hard, and still going on. I think I expected it to be easier. Not easy, just easier. And, I realize now, I expected it to end already. What, too much to ask?

It's not that I think things should be easy by now, an it's not that I expect a magic wand to be waived the day after an anniversary, freeing us for another year. It's more that I think of these seasons as release valves, allowing us to feel and release whatever hard things need to be felt. This year, though, I think I have been too crowded to exercise the valve, my mom here for a visit on the anniversary, and now both my parents for this year's iteration of Monkey's birthday followed by the due date anniversary. The time in between eaten up by work and more work and some garden variety colds.

My parents left Tuesday morning, and that afternoon, after I dropped Monkey off at gymnastics, I headed for the cemetery. I haven't been since A's birthday, when the snow was covering the ground, knee-deep. I hadn't planned to go. But my plans changed midday, and suddenly I was the designated gymnastics driver, and the place being not five miles from the cemetery, I had to go. Had you been magically transported into my car at that very moment to magically ask me what it was I was hoping to find where I was going, I am not sure I would be able to tell you. I have been blocked, crowded, boxed in. Maybe it was the open space and the early spring air I was seeking, pleasantly cool, with just a hint of the warm that is to come in the months ahead. Maybe I was hoping to cry buckets and leave cleansed. Maybe. I don't even know that I can say that. I was suffocating. I needed a change, some kind of change.

Monkey's birthday weekend was an exercise in just enough-- just enough barely controlled chaos to give the girl a great celebration without losing my ever-loving mind. Monday, the due date anniversary, was a ridiculously busy work day, loaded up with holy crap, how did I miss this-- Purim is tonight?!?!?! And parents. Whom I love dearly, and who are really usually better than most. But what I needed was room, and instead they hovered.

Did you know that I was supposed to post on Monday? I asked for the date on our cozy little GITW scheduling calendar. I thought I would have things to say. Something profound perhaps, about the birthday and the due date, the sweet and the bitter. Something. What I had, just then, and for two more days after, was a whole lot of nothing.

I am a bit better now. But only just better. Getting my house back to myself (and the usual suspects residing therein) has helped. But the week has continued in the busy, though no longer impossible, mode. The weekend in front of me is busy again, with the things that need doing in the here and now. Deliverables, so to speak. And so I continue to leaf through the calendar, forward, looking for less, looking for days not already overcommitted, not promised to too many tasks.

I am looking for the time I can spend with myself, and with A. Because this is what this is really about-- he is being crowded out. I allow him to be crowded out. I never did cry at the cemetery this Tuesday. I felt the weight, played with it, shifted it around. But it didn't come out. I guess it's not ready to come out. Yet.

What are your seasons? If you've gone through a few now, how have they been for you? Do you ever feel too crowded? How do you find, create, or protect the time and space you need?

birthday blues

I’ve been struggling to the point of physical sickness this week, obsessing about what should have been. Imagining balloons and cake and hours of smiling video. Sadie would have been one yesterday. It was frankly one the hardest days I’ve had so far.

Everything that’s been mercifully floating around the periphery lately crashed in on me over the last few days. I was back at her bedside. Pacing the waiting room in the PICU. Saying goodbye.

.:.

I’ve been trying with great difficulty to find something hopeful to say here as I’m typically not one to be dark or melancholy. But it occurred to me that this is exactly the place where I will be understood if my armour does slip momentarily. Even the most resilient grow weary on occasion. And truth be told, I’m just really goddamn tired.

I’d like a free pass that says I can shut the world out for a time in order to selfishly tend to myself. Be it sleeping away a day or reading a book in one sitting or walking central London in silence, I earned it when I suffered this loss, didn’t I? My pass would read, ‘Get out of my face and just understand. I’ll be back when I’m ready. I promise.’

Of course it doesn’t work that way. God knows disappearing or shutting out the world completely would try the patience of even our most perservering family and friends. But to drop all pretense on my random dismal days, with friends and colleagues and strangers in the street bearing witness, doesn’t really jive either.

I feel the only thing to do is go back to polishing my metal. Ride out days like this causing as little collateral damage as possible. Look for the next bright one. Wonder if anyone realizes how I'm cursing pretty much everything in my path until it comes.

.::.

My deepest desire, aside from having her here with us, has been to be assured that she knew how deeply she was loved. That she changed my life distinctly and forever for the better. That my heart aches always in her absence. That she knows I would love nothing more than to pull her into my arms and sing, "Happy birthday, Baby," softly in her ear.

.::.

How do you deal with dark days? Are you better on your own, or does it help to be surrounded by people?